Infrastructure work is beginning this week at hospital sites across Northern Ireland in preparation for the removal of car parking charges in May 2026.
Minor work will start firstly ay Musgrave Park Hospital in Belfast, Daisy Hill Hospital in Newry and Craigavon Area Hospital with further hospital sites set to see installation work commencing in the coming weeks.
It is part of the work needed for a new traffic management system at hospital car parks to enable free parking.
The Department of Health said that until the new system goes live in May 2026, parking charges remain in place.
It comes two years after the Hospital Parking Charges Act was passed by the Northern Ireland Assembly in 2022.
Earlier this year, First Minister Michelle O’Neill criticised the Department of Health after she said it had “failed” to implement the necessary infrastructure to make car parking at hospitals free as planned.
Her comments came after the Northern Ireland Executive approved a request from the then health minister Robin Swann to defer the removal of the charges for another two years.
The Department of Health said at the time that the intervention was due to “deepening budgetary pressures” and “practical obstacles” with the original date, including issues with the contract for automatic number-plate recognition (ANPR).
But in a statement on Wednesday, the department said site location surveys across the Health and Social Care Trusts trusts have been undertaken by specialist engineers to prepare for the installation of ANPR cameras and associated engineering works.
ANPR technology captures vehicle registration plates at the entry and exit points of a car park showing when a vehicle arrives and when it leaves.
By May 2026, more than 200 cameras will be installed at 16 sites.
The statement from the department added that over the next few months, engineering teams will be erecting camera poles and installing other infrastructure at trust sites.